How much does your dealership spend on advertising each year?

Dealers spend billions of dollars on advertising every year. With that kind of money invested in ads, you want to roll out the red carpet for your leads and turn them into buyers.

But if there are issues in your sales cycle, just spending money on ads isn’t going to cut it. The key to converting leads to buyers and ad spend to ROI is targeting pain points in the sales process that affect your customer experience.

Why miss out on leads that you’ve already paid for because of a faulty, manual process? Every time your sales reps place or receive a sales call — even on their cellphones — that lead’s record needs to be updated in your CRM. The problem is, the more time your sales team spends on data entry, the less time they have to focus on selling.

A call wasn’t routed properly because the receptionist was at lunch when a prospect called in.

A web lead submitted a form and one of your reps opened the email, got distracted and never followed up with the lead.

You didn’t have the lead’s vehicle of choice in stock, and your rep failed to suggest a different vehicle.

If you’re looking to improve revenue, reel those leads in before they slip through the cracks. In order to convert prospects to buyers, you need to document every interaction they have with you, address their needs and follow up with them.

If you’re starting to feel like the Energizer Bunny — always going, going, going — the thought of finding time to make sure leads are moving through the sales cycle can be overwhelming.

Are your salespeople following up with prospective buyers? How do you even know if they’ve followed up if they make calls from their cellphones (after all, they’re on the go a lot too)? Do you need to assign follow-up calls to a salesperson who’s been sitting idle for a while?

There are a lot of moving parts involved in converting sales leads to buyers. But just because you’re out of the office doesn’t mean your leads have to get stuck in the sales cycle.

Whether it’s a rude comment from the receptionist, the salesperson failing to set an appointment or nobody responding at all, mishandled calls can and do lead to missed sales. What’s worse, if a caller has a not-so-stellar experience with your dealership, they can use the power of word of mouth against you. AdAge reports that when it comes to making a purchase, buyers turn to recommendations from friends and family more than all other consumer touchpoints.

Every member of your staff who interacts with customers on the phone needs to be trained how to meet a prospect’s needs — and give them movie star treatment too.

If your sales team feels like it has a revolving door, it’s time to take a close look at what’s causing them to leave. You’ll likely find several factors at play: the pressure to meet sales quotas, not enough leads coming in, tension between staff members, etc. But a lot of the time, turnover boils down to inadequate training.

If salespeople aren’t properly trained to turn leads into buyers, they’re not going to bring in much revenue for themselves or the dealership. If they’re not bringing in money, they won’t be with your dealership long.

We’ll be honest: Training is an investment of time and money. But if you’re willing to invest in your team up front, you can build a successful, experienced sales force that boosts your profits.

The Internet dominates the car-shopping process. In fact, a 2013 Polk study revealed that buyers spend 75 percent of their time shopping online. Buyers are used to finding what they’re looking for within seconds on the web. If leads fill out a contact form on your website and don’t hear back within minutes, they’re going to move on. But if you can respond within 10 minutes (auto replies don’t count!), you triple the chances of the lead walking through your doors.